Come on baby, light my fire.....

Whoever said village life was dead? I think the very fact that Wessex Water want to build a great big carbunkle  (Prince Charles's word, not mine) of a pumping station in our village which I'll point out is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (more of that on a separate "rant" post) has brought us all together. We had our Jubilee Hog Roast and Beacon Lighting on Monday evening and sold over 200 tickets - not bad when you think that's probably the entire population of our string of villages. The heavens shone down instead of opening down on us  - a small window of sunny opportunity in an otherwise miserably wet half term week.

Waiting patiently

Come on baby, light my fire

Can someone put him out

The finished article

 This was a first for me - as I've said before I've never seen a beacon lit and it's a great spectacle. For once I could see the point of an elf and safety fence as the sparks rained down on the grass below and The Monkey tried to get as close as he possibly could. As is the way with all five year olds, they have to have an obsession with at least one of the natural elements. Luckily The Monkey's is water but I can see that changing to fire after Monday's inferno.

The history of lighting beacons as a method of sending messages and celebrating joyous royal occasions dates back hundreds of years. We could see at least 12 others from ours. Before the days of elf and safety this is what they looked like. No safe basket and 50ft wide cordon here:

Unless they also went in for human sacrifice then.

As you might remember, I took The Monkey on a dry run up the hill a couple of weeks ago and thought it had spectacularly misfired after he declared he was never ever going to do it again, ever. But the enormous pork bap must have fueled his energy because he waltzed up that hill without a wimper. He did, however, as he did the first time, complain on the way down that his heart was breaking and seemed in genuine pain. This seemed quite worrying especially given that he is having a general anaesthetic in a few weeks and we have already lost a cat to the anaesthetist's needle so I made a mental note to bring it up at his pre-op hospital appointment. Then I realised that he's only 5 and only really knows where his stomach and willy are and so the pain he was probably feeling in his "heart" was probably a bad case of stitch. It gets me every time when I run down that hill too.

But still on matters villagey. My friend, neighbour and drinking partner, J (haven't worked out her porn star name yet) and I were asked by the chairman of the village hall committee to have a look at last year's categories for the village fete competitions and inject some young blood into them for this year's. Consequently we have re-written them based on our talents and the equipment in our childrens' art cupboards. So this year we'll be no doubt cleaning up as far as 1st prizes go. What goes around comes around. Two years ago I was delighted to see a "stone carving" category in there. It seemed pretty random but I guess someone had recently been on a stone carving course and quite fairly assumed that theirs would be the only entry. It was lucky for me though - I'd just finished the famous penguin and promptly won first prize.

I am not at all competitive......